Pimax 8K rocks in 4.37 - Or how to solve the issues with it!

[Korbi]

Guys, the 8K is flyable in 4.37!
No PP issues, a HUD collimated to infinity, no double textboxes or orbit views, just an awesome experience!
I was able to solve everything of these on my own system and on that of a friend, so its not just a one off solution - I’m pretty sure it can work for a lot of us.

It’s a bit complicated to write it up, the setup process is somewhat extensive, so bare with me. At the moment I have no access to my cockpit, 8K and the connected PC, but I will try to explain it today and then maybe even further next week.

Stay tuned!

[Pitbull]

I agree. 4.37 with 8K is so great, there’s no way back to “2D”-BMS for me.

[pjgs]

@Korbi I left BMS after discovering VR.
It’s great to have VR in BMS.
I am using a Pimax 5k+ without PP, prefer this over PP although the HUD is almost
unreadable.
I am sure things will get better with the updates to come.
Using VA and JanJan’s plugin for all the other stuff works great.

[Snake122]

@pjgs agreed, we have been discussing the parallel projections thing in the other thread in this Pimax sub forum. I agree unchecking PP for scaling and performance, but like you said there the HUD issues. But the biggest issue to me with it unchecked is the mouse cursor being waaaaaay off.

[Korbi]

Exactly those issues are all solvable!

Let me tell you, how I did it:

First we need to make clear which tools we need:
-PiTool
-Steam
-SteamVr
-Falcon BMS 4.37.0

Steam:
Set up Steam to recognize Falcon BMS. Add BMS to your games library and enable it to incorperate it into
SteamVR (see other posts about worldscale in SteamVR how to perform that step)

PiTool:
Go to Settings/Games tab and choose Falcon BMS in the dropdown menu (PiTool also recognizes SteamVR Titles, so you maybe have to run Falcon and SteamVR once, to have that option available). Now scroll down to the end and select “Restore Settings”, apply and save.
Go back to “Common” in the dropdown list at the top of the Settings/Games tab. Here I set up my PiTool as follows:
FOV: Large (that solved my HUD collimation issue)
Render Quality: 1.0
Enable Parallel Projection: False
Turn on Smart Smoothing: True
Hidden Area Mask: False (Solved my Mouse cursor offset)
apply and save

SteamVR:
I setup the resolution not to a 100% but to match the Pimax native resolution of 3840 in the global settings and left the per application setting for the resolution at 100% as this refferences the global setting, which is already set up correctly. Set the world scale for BMS to your liking.

Now I show you how I start BMS:

After a fresh boot I only start the PiTool and the new BMS Launcher. If the “Enable VR” option in the launcher is ticked SteamVR will launch automatically. After SteamVR is running and the Pimax recognized I start BMS with a klick on Launch.
I start a TE and have fun with a perfectly working VR experience!

Next week I will have access to my setup again and give more detailed information on specifics etc.

Have fun!

[Korbi]

@Snake122 said in Pimax 8K rocks in 4.37 - Or how to solve the issues with it!:

@pjgs agreed, we have been discussing the parallel projections thing in the other thread in this Pimax sub forum. I agree unchecking PP for scaling and performance, but like you said there the HUD issues. But the biggest issue to me with it unchecked is the mouse cursor being waaaaaay off.

@pjgs said in Pimax 8K rocks in 4.37 - Or how to solve the issues with it!:

@Korbi I left BMS after discovering VR.
It’s great to have VR in BMS.
I am using a Pimax 5k+ without PP, prefer this over PP although the HUD is almost
unreadable.
I am sure things will get better with the updates to come.
Using VA and JanJan’s plugin for all the other stuff works great.

Please try, what I just posted.

[Snake122]

Actually someone please try this before adding to SteamVR:
Field of View: Normal
Compatible with Parallel Projections CHECKED
Hidden Area Mask: UNCHECKED
(Smart Smoothing etc. your call)

Check if cockpit scale/Collimation feels better than Large FOV with parallel projects checked

THEN run @Korbi’s instructions and tell me if they look the same.

I’ve noticed that there is a little bit of PiTool bug going on here and when you hit restore on the BMS specific settings it turns ON parallel projections and Normal FOV. Then I had to go in and manually uncheck Hidden Area Mask in the specific BMS setting even though they get restored checked here.

I think that’s the actual magic settings you are really running @Korbi due to PiTool being messy. You enabled game specific settings and I don’t believe in your instructions the common setting is actually doing anything, you are running Normal FOV and parallel projections because that is what Pimax restores it to. That is what works with BMS right now I think.

If I go large FOV, with or without parallel projections there are the mix of issued discussed and even goes back to having mouse cursor issues with Hidden Mask Area unchecked and checked I believe. When you mentioned Hidden Mask Area in the other thread I tried it stand alone it didn’t work before your fix today. Also for me adjusting SteamVR resolution has no effect on this as fixes, just quality/performance.

@chihirobelmo not sure if this helps you in general with collimation on all headsets, this seems is some kind of VR aspect ratio issue. This looks about right and SteamVR 100% of 4620x3948 (just so happens to the settings I listed).
At 5120x3160 (large FOV without parallel projections) I get good cockpit scaling but major collimation, overlay, and cursor issues.
At 8336x3948 (large FOV with parallel projections) I get good overlays, HUD, and cursor but way too close to the ICP with a huge cockpit.

[Korbi]

@Snake122 said in Pimax 8K rocks in 4.37 - Or how to solve the issues with it!:

You enabled game specific settings and I don’t believe in your instructions the common setting is actually doing anything, you are running Normal FOV and parallel projections because that is what Pimax restores it to. That is what works with BMS right now I think.

and thats where it gets strange. If do not use the default/restored settings for BMS in the PiTool its all messed up. I have to set the default/restored settings for BMS and do the setup on the common section. Thats why I wrote my guide how I did.

The thing with the resolution in SteamVR i only mentioned, so no one falls over and wonders about very bad image quality

[chihirobelmo]

in the next update, I added the option to manually offset the crop range area (BMS internally drawing a bit larger area but cropping them for VR, but those area offset matters for HUD focus) so I hope it may work for pimax…

[Snake122]

@Korbi but if you can see those BMSsettings still and not just the unchecked “enable game specific settings”, you never said to disable them again. I have no doubt that that is the way found the settings plus even more work that you didn’t list.

To me with the basic common setting without anything else (I think even adding it to SteamVR library isn’t necessary) is parallel projections with normal FOV. This fixes everything, including the cursor. I cannot replicate hidden area mask fixing this, just normal FOV with parallel projections checked in my 2 hours of testing setting after setting. What really matters is you found the settings ultimately, so thank you so much!!!

Do me a favor and check your resolution again in SteamVR, I bet it will be the aspect ratio will be the same 4620x3948, so if it’s 3840 exactly, it should be 3280 as your second number if my math is right.

@chihirobelmo thanks, hopefully it will do the trick for us!

[Korbi]

@Snake122 I will post screenshots of how I set up everything tomorrow.
But I already can confirm your SteamVR question a bit, the aspect ratio is wrong, so I chose to only set the first number as close as possible to the correct value of 3840.

Also I did not uncheck anything in the BMS specific section of the PiTool after restoring.

[Korbi]

Anyway I’m sure we can figure it out, to make also your experience with the Pimax as awesome as mine and my friends until a possible fix to ease things up with uptade 1 or 2.

[Snake122]

@Korbi Other people might, but I don’t need screenshots, your method works! I should have been clearer about that! I followed it exactly twice and then also double checked each step.

I’m just saying I think the short cut for right now is common settings (or roll with what BMS restore setting do for you): normal FOV, parallel projections checked, because that’s what the restore does to BMS settings and it should be overriding your common ones. But until we have some one else try it, there maybe something else in your “secret recipe” that kicked it into working. But I can’t really confirm on my end without uninstalling PiTool and SteamVR.

Yeah, SteamVR does some weird things with resolutions but also on top of that the second number matters because it will confirm what the aspect ratio is for normal or wide FOV. Interestingly, FOV settings in the Pimax also change aspect ratio.

[frachy]

this method is actually normal FOV with enabling parallel projection.Because the pitool’s common setting is overwrited by the per-program setting.

But parallel projection will cause huge performance hit, which is the real problem.

First, as mentioned, this method’s key is the default setting of pitool is parallel projection ON, which is done when you hit the “restore” button in pitool’s bms 4.37 per-program settings. The per-program setting will overwrite the common setting, so though the common setting’s parallel projection is unchecked, it will be overwrited to checked. To prove this, just uncheck parallel projection in pitool’s bms 4.37 settings, restart steamVR(or PC), you’ll find the HUD is not collimated. So this method is actually enabling parallel projection.

Second, the good framerate is because the low resolution. 8KX will have best resolution when STEAMVR is set to 200%, not 100%. When set to 100%, 8KX only give about half of its resolution capability. If set to 200%, the performance hit will be apparent. Actually only set to 150% will exceed 3080’s 12G VRAM, causing the fps dropped significantly.

in a short, the parallel projection will give big performance hit when you want good resolution. With large fov and clear resolution, a 3080 is not enough for now,

[Snake122]

@frachy I think the 200% is a little much, but I’ll test it tonight. I can’t ever recall seeing in other headsets like the Quest 2 have quality improvement over about 150%. For those at least it doesn’t work that way, the PPD/DPI limit is still a thing.

I didn’t try over 100% in the Pimax much because often we are talking a very large amount of pixels that today’s video cards just aren’t designed to pump out. 8k TV’s 33 million bring a lot video cards to their knees in 2d, let alone the per eye effect of VR even with the extra VRam of say a 3090/4090.
Parallel projections checked and wide view is truly an 8k number of pixels even at 100%. Also, I would say 100% resolution with normal FOV, Parallel Projections checked, is somewhat similar to the PP unchecked large FOV resolution that I normally run at, so if 200% resolution quality doesn’t knock my socks off, I’ll probably be ok with that performance level. Like I said, I’ll test here in about 6 hours or so.

[frachy]

@Snake122 OK. The C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\config\library\vrsettings\steamvr.vrsettings file need to modified first, change the line " “maxRecommendedResolution” to " “maxRecommendedResolution” : 12000," before set steamVR’s SS to 150% or 200%, or steamVR will limit the Max SS to about 100% for 8KX.

For me even 200% perhaps too much, 150% gives significant more resolution than 100% . And for the limited bandwidth of DP, 75HZ is better in resolution than 90HZ.

[Snake122]

@frachy I have been able adjust the SteamVR slider once I turn “Render resolution” to custom and have for years now. I don’t think that is different from your setting. I’ve 200% and 150% I don’t see much difference personally. also, I always keep it at 72hz because since I prefer large FOV, it was always the most realistic for performance settting. Granted, where I am looking is inside the cockpit at the labels and the MFDs because that’s most what I want the detail improved on.

[frachy]

@Snake122 You don’t see much difference because the steamVR has a hidden resolution limitation for 8kx unless you change the “maxRecommendedResolution” settings to a larger number like 12000. If this file is not modified, even you change the SteamVR sliderbar to 150% or 200%, the REAL resolution is about 100% acturally.

[pjgs]

Thank you so much for figuring this out.
This works perfectly for me using the Pimax 5K+.
The only extra thing I had to adjust was setting the Hidden Area Mask to false in the Falcon BMS game settings in PiTool.
Mouse and HUD issues fixed.

[Snake122]

I was hoping U1 with it’s “Improvement to VR resolution casting” would fix the issues with parallel projections and maybe the large FOV. Unfortunately it still seems to be the same Normal field of view with Parallel Projections checked is still the best setting with the other issues as reported with settings other than that.

However, I think I’m noticing more texture shimmering than before. That could also be the new video card drivers and other things. Let me know if you all are seeing this or not, made some big changes to my PC this week so it may not be BMS. Overall, hoping that at least the parallel projections and hopefully the field of view will work someday in BMS VR. It is still early for sure and very happy to have it as an option!